The production of sausage using natural sausage casing is a relatively onerous job. The intestines used for the casing normally taper. Thus, whether these intestines be of beef, sheep, goat, or pigs, the slaughter house normally packages them for the butcher by cutting them up into sections and selling packages of sections of approximately the same diameter. To preserve them they are salted and normally wrapped in bundles that are tied with string.
In order to use the casings the butcher must open the package and soak the individual sections in water so as to desalt them and soften them. They are then fitted sequentially over the nozzle of the grinder or sausage-stuffing machine and compressed accordion-fashion.
It is also known to package the sausage-casing sections in a container filled with brine, with all of the sections carried on a ring. Such an arrangement eliminates the work of separating, desalting, and soaking the casing sections.
It is also known from my earlier French Pat. No. 1,373,697 to market the sausage-casing sections on a flexible and smooth polyethylene sleeve which is fitted over the nozzle of the sausage-stuffing machine. This arrangement substantially reduces the handling operations for the butcher, thereby saving considerable expense.
Even with the best of the above-described systems the actual operation of filling the casings with sausage meat or other stuffing is a relatively tricky job. Even when extreme care has been taken it is fairly common for the sausages to come apart at the joints between adjacent sausage-casing sections. Furthermore with my above-described earlier patent and system a common problem is that the polyethylene sleeve carrying the sausage casing sections is entrained by them as they are pulled off, or on the other hand prevents the sausage-casing sections from being pulled off the nozzle.